Spirals in the Caribbean

An in-depth analysis of literary and cultural productions from Haiti and the Dominican Republic and their diasporas

Spirals in the Caribbean responds to key questions elicited by the human rights crisis accelerated in 2013 by the Dominican Constitutional Court?s Ruling 168-13, which denationalized hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent. Spirals details how a paradigm of permanent conflict between the two nations has its roots in reactions to the Haitian Revolution?a conflict between slavers and freedom-seekers?contests over which have been transmitted over generations, repeating with a difference. Anti-Haitian nationalist rhetoric hides this long trajectory. Through the framework of the Spiral, a concept at the core of a Haitian literary aesthetic developed in the 1960s called Spiralism, Sophie Marí?ez explores representations of colonial, imperial, and national-era violence. She takes as evidence legislation, private and official letters, oral traditions, collective memories, Afro-indigenous spiritual and musical practices, and works of fiction, plays, and poetry produced across the island and its diasporas from 1791 to 2002.

With its emphases on folk tales, responses to the 1937 genocide, the Constitution of the Dominican Republic, Afro-indigenous collective memories, and lesser-known literary works on the genocide of indigenous populations in the Caribbean, Spirals in the Caribbean will attract students, scholars, and general readers alike.

"Students of Haitian-Dominican relations will be thrilled by the ease with which Sophie Marí?ez crosses languages and borders, and moves among media and genres, to bundle topics and sources as diverse as the musical, lyrical, and style innovations of Dominican rock pioneer, Luis (?Terror?) Días, the aesthetics and philosophy of Haitian Spiralist authors René Philoct?te and Frankétienne, diverse historiographic and literary figurations of the martyred Taíno cacica, Anacaona, and border-crossing folklore and vodou symbolism. A heady and richly detailed portrait of an island crisscrossed with intense human and cultural exchanges, Spirals in the Caribbean will trigger fruitful conversations among feminist, decolonial, and anti-racist scholars in a range of humanities fields."